Dissertation so far

This entry was posted by Laura on Friday, 3 December, 2010 at

If you’ve been following along with my blog, you know that the end goal is for me to complete my dissertation and get my PhD.  At various times, I work on various chapters.  I’ve done some editing on the methodology chapter and the literature review section.  I’ve done additional editing on my introduction.  I still need to figure out what I want to do with my footnotes.  (For the Storm chapter, I just totally removed them.  I didn’t bother with them in the Monaghan piece.  I forgot that I had them in Akermanis paper.)   Do I want them in or out?  Bah.

I wanted to give people an idea of where I really am in this process.  Thus, I’ve put everything together into one pdf file.

This is my dissertation so far.

If you have any feedback on it, please feel free to share.  Feedback is love.

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  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    I would prefer to have consistent and appropriate referencing across the three controversies (and some others which might arise during the course of the dissertation), especially of the population study methodology.

    It’s interesting to see the Facebook Storm community called “Storm you suck haha”. [Hale 2010: 25] More than 8000 members/likes! And compared to another Storm community called “Shame on you Storm”, which had less than 20 members.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    The Akermanis footnotes work well. I notice that your numbering is Roman, rather than Arabic or alphabetical. Is this University of Canberra-compliant?

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    I would prefer to have consistent and appropriate referencing across the three controversies (and some others which might arise during the course of the dissertation), especially of the population study methodology.

    Arg. And now I realize I left out the one appendix I do have sort of written. (And I could have included the scripts I have and some of the other raw data. I just quickly tossed that together.)

    And yeah. There really needs to be some improved formatting across all three of those. What I will probably need to do is print out all three and look at them side by side to see what is happening with my headers, formatting, etc. :/ The methododologies and assumptions in those chapters feel repetitive when I start looking them together… but if I start stripping those out, they don’t stand alone. Added to that, it strips out a lot of the content and it becomes a lot worse with “See data. Discuss data.”

    I’ll probably put the footnotes back in the

    Some of the total group membership stuff is weird. The way things happen is just… yeah. Weird.

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    The roman numerals just happened. No idea why. That didn’t match with what I had for the Melbourne Storm paper before I stripped them out. I’ll probably put the Melbourne Storm ones back and use standard numbering for all of them.

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    Ignoring the page spacing issues for now… but uploaded a new version with Storm footnotes and part of the one appendix. Headings don’t appear as bad as they could be when I just skimmed through them. Inside the chapters, they all look like second level headings using APA. I’ve been assuming that top level headings are for chapter titles. That might be the cause of some of my current issues with the formatting looking weird.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    (“Just happened” the way the LMH comments did: one about general sport fandom and the second specifically about the Shinboners. The comments, like the footnotes, told me you used Microsoft Word).

    For future reference and courtesy (when you come to make your table of contents; on Acrobat Distiller, it can be made easily):

    INTRODUCTION [page 2]
    REVIEW OF LITERATURE [page 5]
    [subheading] Definition of fandom [page 5]
    [subheading of a subheading, level 3] Sports marketers
    Sociologists/historians [6]
    Media and fans [7]
    Pop culture academics [7]
    [subheading of Introduction] Sports Fandom and the Internet [7]

    POPULATION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF AUSTRALIAN SPORTS FANDOM [8]
    [subheading] The VFL/AFL [8]
    [subheading] Soccer [12]
    [subheading] Swimming [12]

    DEMONSTRATING CLUB ALLEGIANCE

    CONNECTION BETWEEN SPORT FANDOM AND ONLINE ACTIVITY [13]

    METHODOLOGY [14]
    Search and traffic [15]
    Sentiment and reputation [16]
    Content analysis [17]
    Usability studies [17?]
    Interactive and collaborative analysis [18]
    Relationship analysis [18]

    POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHIC STUDIES
    Online target [20]
    Predictive analysis [20]

    RATIONALE FOR POPULATION STUDY [21]
    Approach [21]

    ONLINE ACTIVITY IN THE WAKE OF THE MELBOURNE STORM CONTROVERSY [24]

    IMPACT OF AKERMANIS COMMENTS ON THE WESTERN BULLDOGS ONLINE FANBASE [33]
    Conclusion [46]

    JOEL MONAGHAN’S MAD MONDAY AND THE ONLINE CANBERRA RAIDERS FANBASE [47]

    REFERENCES [62]

    FOOTNOTES [68]

    For a data-driven analysis, 72 pages of draft is fairly thin compared to the dissertations I have read which are 100-300 pages long (and which are more narratively discursive).

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    I see!

    It might be one cause, yes.

    Would like to see the Storm footnotes.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ANYPWFYQMNG7NRB55Q7C3PR6C4 Adelaide La Blanche-Dupont

    No, they’re not repetitive.

    Each works well for the different controversies. (especially Facebook, Twitter and the goal-oriented sites which might encourage longer user involvement).

    Storm and Akermanis are different from Monaghan because they happened within the seasons of the respective elite leagues. (Good references to St Kilda legal troubles in the Monaghan!)

    Don’t strip them out more than you have to.

    Most peculiar! (the total group membership). Much of your data gives partial clues and explanations, so fans might not be at sea.

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    I’ll work on getting a table of contents into it soon.

    And I’m only about 30,000 words into it. I think I am allowed to top out at 75,000 words. That doesn’t necessarily leave me much as wiggle room as I’d like. That means I’ve probably got another three long chapters for analysis and a couple of short ones. (I’ve rewritten my Gillard post to make it into a short chapter. I also rewrote my Melbourne Demons / Port Adelaide Power Darwin Google post into a short chapter. I’m debating putting my World Cup Soccer for Gowalla and Foursquare into a short chapter. Once I get the follower data for Anna Meares on Twitter, I’ll probably consider doing a short, 500 word chapter on that.)

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    Fixed the Storm version. The footnotes should now be in the uploaded chapter. (Along with the Northern Territory part. And some minor tweaks to the introduction. Slowly working on editing. The editing part is the scary part.)

  • http://www.fanhistory.com LauraH

    Thanks for that feedback. Seriously. When I get to writing the thank you part, I’ll definitely give you a shout out as your feedback through out this process has been immeasurably helpful. :) If/When I get to Adelaide (hopefully in February/March), I’ll treat you to a coffee.

    Good to know that things aren’t as repetitive as they feel when I write them.

    The St. Kilda thing is a good counterpoint. I’m trying to think of what it would take for a female athlete to get as much attention as Monaghan got. Stephanie Rice’s situation might be close but not on the same level.

    The data is important as some of my conclusions feel largely unsupported. I’m open to my interpretations being wrong.

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